The A-10 Thunderbolt II heads back to Iraq

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122nd Fighter Wing deploying 300 airmen to Mideast
Originally Posted By: From the article
More than 300 members of Fort Wayne’s Air National Guard base will head to the Mideast for six months beginning in October.
...
12 of the 21 A-10 combat jets flown by the Fort Wayne base would be part of the deployment.

The F-22 can't do the A-10's job. Neither can the F-35.
Watch as the AF continues to insist on retiring these majestic ground attack jets.

Another article about the deployment. This is from Stars and Stripes:
Islamic State fight could breathe new life into the A-10
Quote:
Months after staving off a trip to the boneyard, the embattled A-10 Thunderbolt II is headed to the Middle East where it could be used to fight Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria.

a-10-thunderbolt-ii-warthog-249.jpg
 
They are PERFECT in the open desert in Iraq/Syria. Imagine being in a machine gun mounted ISIS Toyota out on some highway in the open desert with an A-10 lurking above! It would only take one round.
 
Yeah, they keep trying to take the A-10 out of service, but it just keeps proving that it's too useful to lose. The F-22 and F-35 are great for going up against an enemy that has an extensive network of air defense radars, but that doesn't describe ISIS.
 
Originally Posted By: mattwithcats
I wonder if the Air Force has considered re-making the Skyraider?

As a drone, it would be easy to fix, fuel efficient, cheap, and disposable.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_A-1_Skyraider

That's a total non-starter. It wouldn't even merit discussion.

it's more likely that they could take and modify mothballed A-10 airframes to become combat drones.
 
Originally Posted By: Blaze
Imagine being in a machine gun mounted ISIS Toyota out on some highway in the open desert with an A-10 lurking above! It would only take one round.

To be fair, it'd take a burst, not one round -- and an F-22 or F-35 could drop one bomb or fire one missile from a much safer altitude and do the same job.

In general, though, I agree that the A-10 needs to stick around. The Air Force needs to get over itself and give its A-10s to the Army. Let the Air Force be about high, fast, and shiny; let the Army be about the actions on the ground.
 
"To be fair, it'd take a burst, not one round -- and an F-22 or F-35 could drop one bomb or fire one missile from a much safer altitude and do the same job."

Nope. Not even close. In ground attack the A-10 is the correct choice, more accurate, better able to pick targets of opportunity and much more survivable if hit. The A-10 engines are well protected from FOD. The F-22 would have to fly out of it's envelope of normal operation and into the visual combat arena. One lucky shot with a pea-shooter while flying lower and slower and it goes down. Hitting a target of opportunity would be a joke. The time and budget to reprogram the airplane for such a role would be prohibitive. Many replacement parts don't exist, anymore. All the tooling is gone, forever. There will never be another F-22 manufactured or rebuild from even minor damage. The fuselage, especially the leading edges would not survive desert airport and low level flight operations. The adverse desert environment extends far up into the atmosphere often enough that it's not a place to fly the F-22. The A-10 is the answer.
 
With a single sortie, the A-10 is more capable of 'volumes of destruction'; the other planes indicated are drop and return to base for munitions, fuel. A-10 was designed to loiter and attack targets of opportunity.

The Army doesn't need them, as their focus is not on this type of equipment. It would be a giant 'one off' for them; the AF has the people and the logistics to maintain and deploy more efficiently.

I worked munitions on the A-10 for 15 years in the CTANG. The DoD decided to takes the planes away...

edit:eek:ej beat me to it.
 
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The AF has tried to get rid of them for years and the Army says, fine, give them to us. The AF backs down and keeps them. The AF wants to be the sole supplier of fixed wing aircraft and doesn't want the Army to get it's foot in the door.
 
Yes, the A10 pilots are going to put Tundra decals on the planes for everyone they shoot up LOL

Originally Posted By: SteveSRT8
As stated above, this weapon is perfect for this mission.

Great to see the Warthog back in the fray!
 
Originally Posted By: ronbo
The AF has tried to get rid of them for years and the Army says, fine, give them to us. The AF backs down and keeps them. The AF wants to be the sole supplier of fixed wing aircraft and doesn't want the Army to get it's foot in the door.
The Key West Agreement of 1947 and Johnson-McConnell of 1966 decimated the Army's fixed-wing capability. I don't see how under those agreements the Army would be allowed to receive A-10s under any circumstance.
 
As I recall the AF didn't really want the A-10. In my Honeywell days I was involved some with ammo development for that Gau8/A gun that GE made. Aerojet was also part of it .Some of the testing of that gun/round was pretty impressive. Dan Mpls. Mn.
 
Originally Posted By: d00df00d
Is there anything about that gun that isn't impressive?
I don't really think so, it's a world-beater.
 
The A-10 is a interesting airplane. I was reading about the A-10 / Thunderbolt II / Warthog a while ago and that led me to the P-47 / Thunderbolt / Jug, another interesting plane. I'm not particularly a military type guy but it seems to me mothballing the A-10 would be a bad idea without a suitable replacement.
 
Those A-10's in the formation shots were based here until a year or so ago.

They were removed and replaced with a drone mission.

I don't know if they went to another guard unit, or were scrapped.
 
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